The Art of Wallpaper Poster

This is a poster that I have designed for Dovecot’s forthcoming exhibition, The Art of Wallpaper: Morris & Co., which looks at the legacy of William Morris (1834-1896). Morris was a poet, craftsman, radical socialist and one of the world’s most successful pattern designers. The exhibition features over 130 works from the Morris & Co. archives and includes some of Morris’s most famous patterns as well as wallpapers by acclaimed 19th and 20th Century designers such as Owen Jones, Dresser, Pugin, and Voysey. 

The poster was designed following brand guidelines from the Sanderson Design Group that include the use of the William Morris designed typeface, Goldentype Original, alongside a palette of four colours drawn from Morris’s designs. The wallpaper image, Acanthus, was supplied by Sanderson from the Morris archive – I cut out the image from its background so it could be placed on a Morris Green background, giving it more of a sense of a physical object (the wallpaper samples will be framed in the exhibition and have a strong physical presence). As well as the poster, I have designed indoor and outdoor banners – other assets will be produced by Dovevot based on my poster design. 

The exhibition runs at Dovecot from 28 January to 11 June 2022. Find out more here.


DIY Art – Louise Fraser

DIY Art is a series of activity packs from EAF and selected artists, inviting people to get creative at home. The instructional creativity kits give insights into an artist’s practice, showing how to use their processes and techniques to create unique artworks. Here is the latest pack that I have designed with Holly Yeoman of the Community Engagement team at Edinburgh Art Festival, this one was created by Louise K Fraser, a neurodivergent teaching artist and educator based in Edinburgh. Louise works across Scotland collaborating, co-creating, devising and delivering imaginative and original participatory workshops. The other packs that I have designed were created by artist Alexa Hare, artist and illustrator Sofia Niazi, artist and educator Naomi Garriock, artist Peter Liversidge, and artists Pester & Rossi. The packs can be downloaded here.  

Drawing: Explore and Expand is Edinburgh Art Festival’s first home creativity kit made with, and for, people with visual impairment, it was devised by Louise K Fraser in consultation with visually impaired artists Anne Dignan, Kasia Jakimczuk and Alan McIntyre. Together the artists worked through how materials and new techniques could be explored by visually impaired people in a home creativity kit. Through three sections, Drawing: Explore and Expand supports building confidence in materials, style, composition and ideas. 

The design of this pack follows the design of the previous activity packs but with some differences that make it accessible to visually impaired people; following guidelines and feedback from the artists involved, I adapted the design to suit these needs. One of the major changes was that the pack needed to be downloadable as a Word document so that users could have the option to increase the type size (or change it completely) to suit their needs – as Metallophile Sp8 (the typeface used on the other packs) is not freely available, I typeset the document in Century Gothic, which closely resembles the basic structure of Metallophile but is available on most computers. Century Gothic has a taller x-height than Metallophile as well as a clarity of letterforms and distinct differences between characters – the document is typeset at 16 points so, even without scaling, it should be comfortable for readers with visual impairment.

Following consultation with the artists, we added some design elements that guide the user to the three different sections of the activity, with clear indications of how much time each section would take and with different sections highlighted in one of three colours. We also added image descriptions for Louise’s illustrations that are presented throughout the pack. It has been very interesting to learn more about the needs of people with visual impairment and how these needs can be assisted through design features – any future packs will build on what we have learned in this project. 

As well as a download, Louise created a pack that included her home-made wax crayons as well as the tools, paper, pencils and tape that are used in the activities. These are all housed in a cardboard box with a printed version of the kit – I designed a DIY Art sticker to go on the box that brings everything together with the DIY Art logo branding.

Image credit: Edinburgh Art Festival

Holly Yeoman, Community Engagement Manager, Edinburgh Art Festival: I have been working with James since 2020 to develop Edinburgh Art Festival’s DIY Art home creativity kit series, which through their strong identity, visual appeal and easy-to-use format, designed by James, have supported us to introduce artist’s practice and process to audiences, helping us to maintain and grow our audience through the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. I always look forward to working with James. 


Oor Mad History Book Running Sheets

These are the running sheets (folded, gathered and trimmed sections ready for binding) of Oor Mad History, a book that I have designed for CAPS, an independent advocacy organisation which provides collective advocacy to different groups of people with mental health issues across Lothian. The book celebrates the community history of mad activism and collective advocacy in Lothian, 2010-2020, sharing the memories and experiences of people who have been involved with the project and looking at what has happened in local collective advocacy and activism since 2010. 

I am proud to have collaborated on this project and it has been really interesting to learn more about the work of CAPS, the Oor Mad History collective advocacy group, and the struggles faced by people with mental health issues. After approving several sets of proofs, feedback for the design has been very positive and I am excited to see the finished book – the running sheets represent the (almost) final stage of the books journey from idea to finished printed object. The book is being printed by Gomer in Wales and is due in mid-December – in time for the celebrations to mark CAPS’ 30th anniversary.

You can find out more about CAPS here.


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